PURPOSE: To verify and compare the occurrence of repair strategies used in the fricative consonants of Brazilian Portuguese, and to analyze the strategies applied for each fricative according to the severity of phonological disorders. METHODS: Participants were 87 subjects of both genders, with ages between 4 years and 8 years and 11 months. All children used repair strategies involving at least one of the fricative consonants (/f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, <img src="/img/revistas/rsbf/v17n1/a07img01.jpg" align="absmiddle">, <img src="/img/revistas/rsbf/v17n1/a07img02.jpg" align="absmiddle">), with minimal occurrence of 40%. Data are from the phonological assessments conducted before phonological therapy, and the severity of phonological disorders was determined by the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised. Data were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: There was progression in the use of repair strategies according to the production complexity of the phoneme. Repair strategies were found in all severities of phonological disorders, and the strategies that most affect speech intelligibility were found in more severe degrees. CONCLUSION: The more complex the fricative, the more repair strategies are used, and the more severe the phonological disorder, the more occurrences these strategies have.
Language development; Speech disorders; Speech-language pathology; Child language; Speech
